parabolic antenna and card for laptop

I need a 100+ mW card for my laptop that I can attach an external antenna to
(preferably a small parabolic hand held), and point it at my house from a
few hundred yards away, maybe even 500-800 to pick up my signal from my
house. Noone lives between his house and mine.

Any suggestions on the card and on a antenna?

Thanks.

Bryce.

Bryce wrote:

> I need a 100+ mW card for my laptop that I can attach an external antenna to
> (preferably a small parabolic hand held), and point it at my house from a
> few hundred yards away, maybe even 500-800 to pick up my signal from my
> house. Noone lives between his house and mine.
>
> Any suggestions on the card and on a antenna?

Cards: (if 802.11b works okay for you)
http://makeashorterlink.com/?P6E512D0B

I've not tried all cards of course, but I can tell you that my Demarc
card works where several others I own will not.

Antennas:
http://www.fab-corp.com/index.htm

Why parabolic? Couldn't a panel do the job?

Bryce <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
> I need a 100+ mW card for my laptop that I can attach an external antenna to
> (preferably a small parabolic hand held), and point it at my house from a
> few hundred yards away, maybe even 500-800 to pick up my signal from my
> house. Noone lives between his house and mine.

You might try a USB client adapter. That eliminates cable loss and has a
better antenna already. You can put it in a reflector, or add an external
antenna.

MiniUSB in a coffee can, or regular USB with a can or other externals
attached.

http://www.usbwifi.orcon.net.nz/
uses the mini dongle in a variety of ways.

And I always find David Taylor's antennas to be interesting.
http://www.nodomainname.co.uk/cantenna/cantenna.htm

--
---
Clarence A Dold - Hidden Valley (Lake County) CA USA 38.8,-122.5

"Bryce" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>I need a 100+ mW card for my laptop that I can attach an external antenna to
>(preferably a small parabolic hand held), and point it at my house from a
>few hundred yards away, maybe even 500-800 to pick up my signal from my
>house. Noone lives between his house and mine.
>
>Any suggestions on the card and on a antenna?

Another consideration may have significant advantages.

The solution you propose requires that your laptop always be
situated where there is a good (direct line of sight) radio path
to your home. Things which interfere with that are great
distance (which your "few hundred yards away" qualifies for),
walls, obstructions like parked cars, trees, etc.

Which means that what you want to do will probably work if you
use it sitting in a second story room with a large window facing
your house. The only other places might be out on a second
floor balcony or on the roof! Obviously those are serious
limitations.

The way around all of that is to use a repeater. The repeater
is located anywhere that provides a good radio path to your
house, and then your laptop need only be within range of the
repeater instead of the house. Hence if the only place it can
work is placed in the small upstairs window, you can put the
repeater there instead of the laptop!

One caveat with repeaters though... they tend to be picky about
the AP's they'll work with. So get one of the same brand as
your AP. Or you can replace the existing AP with an AP and
repeater known to work. (Two Linksys WRT54G routers, with third
party firmware to enable one of them as a router, are an example
known to work well. A more expensive combination, that will
work out of the box, is a WRT54G AP and a WRE54G router.)

--
Floyd L. Davidson <http://web.newsguy.com/floyd_davidson>
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska) (E-Mail Removed)

Floyd L. Davidson wrote:
> "Bryce" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>
>>I need a 100+ mW card for my laptop that I can attach an external antenna to
>>(preferably a small parabolic hand held), and point it at my house from a
>>few hundred yards away, maybe even 500-800 to pick up my signal from my
>>house. Noone lives between his house and mine.
>>
>>Any suggestions on the card and on a antenna?
>
>
> Another consideration may have significant advantages.
>
> The solution you propose requires that your laptop always be
> situated where there is a good (direct line of sight) radio path
> to your home. Things which interfere with that are great
> distance (which your "few hundred yards away" qualifies for),
> walls, obstructions like parked cars, trees, etc.
>
> Which means that what you want to do will probably work if you
> use it sitting in a second story room with a large window facing
> your house. The only other places might be out on a second
> floor balcony or on the roof! Obviously those are serious
> limitations.
>
> The way around all of that is to use a repeater. The repeater
> is located anywhere that provides a good radio path to your
> house, and then your laptop need only be within range of the
> repeater instead of the house. Hence if the only place it can
> work is placed in the small upstairs window, you can put the
> repeater there instead of the laptop!
>
> One caveat with repeaters though... they tend to be picky about
> the AP's they'll work with. So get one of the same brand as
> your AP. Or you can replace the existing AP with an AP and
> repeater known to work. (Two Linksys WRT54G routers, with third
> party firmware to enable one of them as a router, are an example
> known to work well. A more expensive combination, that will
> work out of the box, is a WRT54G AP and a WRE54G router.)
>
You might consider Hawking HWU54D
(http://www.hawkingtech.com/prodSpec.php?ProdID=208)
USB client which includes a small panel antenna. Approx $60.

It has a 5-6 ft cord on it. You can also put one extension cord on it
and with a certain kind (powered I think) can go further.

This is what I got for a neighbor at our condos where he was connecting
to an antenna on the other size of the marina building, about 50-75
yards away - without unobstructed LOS.
http://members.cox.net/tulsaalstons/...%20Network.htm

Bob

Thanks Floyd!


"Floyd L. Davidson" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> "Bryce" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>>I need a 100+ mW card for my laptop that I can attach an external antenna
>>to
>>(preferably a small parabolic hand held), and point it at my house from a
>>few hundred yards away, maybe even 500-800 to pick up my signal from my
>>house. Noone lives between his house and mine.
>>
>>Any suggestions on the card and on a antenna?
>
> Another consideration may have significant advantages.
>
> The solution you propose requires that your laptop always be
> situated where there is a good (direct line of sight) radio path
> to your home. Things which interfere with that are great
> distance (which your "few hundred yards away" qualifies for),
> walls, obstructions like parked cars, trees, etc.
>
> Which means that what you want to do will probably work if you
> use it sitting in a second story room with a large window facing
> your house. The only other places might be out on a second
> floor balcony or on the roof! Obviously those are serious
> limitations.
>
> The way around all of that is to use a repeater. The repeater
> is located anywhere that provides a good radio path to your
> house, and then your laptop need only be within range of the
> repeater instead of the house. Hence if the only place it can
> work is placed in the small upstairs window, you can put the
> repeater there instead of the laptop!
>
> One caveat with repeaters though... they tend to be picky about
> the AP's they'll work with. So get one of the same brand as
> your AP. Or you can replace the existing AP with an AP and
> repeater known to work. (Two Linksys WRT54G routers, with third
> party firmware to enable one of them as a router, are an example
> known to work well. A more expensive combination, that will
> work out of the box, is a WRT54G AP and a WRE54G router.)
>
> --
> Floyd L. Davidson <http://web.newsguy.com/floyd_davidson>
> Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska) (E-Mail Removed)

On Tue, 10 May 2005 08:25:14 -0700, "Bryce" <(E-Mail Removed)>
wrote:

>I need a 100+ mW card for my laptop that I can attach an external antenna to
>(preferably a small parabolic hand held), and point it at my house from a
>few hundred yards away, maybe even 500-800 to pick up my signal from my
>house. Noone lives between his house and mine.
>
>Any suggestions on the card and on a antenna?

http://www.geocities.com/zoomkat/antenna.htm

800 yards is apx .5 miles. If your wireless source has line of sight
The hawking HWU54D will just do it but you may need to move it around
while watching the signal strength till you can optimize it. as someone
already indicated - it has a 6db antenna (every 3db doubles your power)
the cable is about 6' long and supplies data/power to the transducer
in the antenna so you have no rf loss thru an rf cable like you would
face adapting an antenna to a PCMCIA wifi adapter card in your laptop
- order a passive usb extension $5.00 from same vendor to save on
shipping -the extension is only about 9' for a total of 15' - if you
need longer you would need active extension about 15' (similar to
usb hub gets power from the usb port but "repeats' the data which
eliminates the degradation and you can still now add a passive into it
for up to 30' remote mounting.